Berlin may have a reputation for being a major party city — there are even discussions that one of its airports could be turned into a giant club when it closes in a couple years — but if you are visiting the German capital with the kids, fear not. We loved visiting Berlin with kids so much that we are already considering whether we might return as soon as this year, despite having plenty of other places still on our travel wish list.
Update as of January 2019: We did go back! We had a great couple of days celebrating our son’s 6th birthday in Berlin. The highlights that time were Legoland Berlin and the German Museum of Technology.
I was especially happy to have loved it so much because more recently I’ve heard a few “meh” reviews from friends who have visited. Obviously, different people like different things. But for us, Berlin was a breath of fresh air — the efficiency of everything, the variety of food options, the fantastic beer, and plenty of fun activities for the kids. It also didn’t hurt that we got lucky enough to have exceptional weather, sunny and in the 80s the entire time we were there!
Our 3-day Berlin with kids itinerary had a strong emphasis on being relaxed and low-key. There’s so much to see there that 3 days in Berlin, the second largest city in the EU, is enough to pretty much just scratch the surface. But the excellent public transportation makes it easy to get around, which is a big help in seeing as much as you can.
And again, we freaking LOVED it.
Updated: Best kid activities in Berlin after 2 trips
As I write this, we’ve now been to Berlin twice with our crew, for a combined total of five days. In our opinion, if you are going to Berlin with kids specifically you should try not to miss the following five places (and Burgermeister, unless you are a vegetarian). For more details, see below as well as this post.
- Berlin Zoo and Aquarium
- Tiergarten (never pass up a park, that’s our philosophy)
- German Museum of Technology (especially if you’ve got littles who love all things transportation)
- East Side Gallery
- Legoland Berlin
We also really enjoyed a BiteMojo tour of Berlin, even Owen!
Our (1st) trip to Berlin with kids: the details
Where we stayed in Berlin: Mostly, the Berlin Marriott Hotel. (Having arrived very late on Friday evening, we spent our first night at a hotel near the airport). We used 120,000 Marriott points to book a room with two queen beds for our Berlin with kids trip, which worked out pretty well. We loved the location of this place, which was very close to public transportation, the Bradenburg Gate and the Tiergarten.
Our favorite places to eat in Berlin with kids:
Stone Brewery: I’ll wax poetic about this below, but this place was fantastic! The menu was outstanding (to the point that we looked at it a few days ahead and were each debating what to order well before we got there) and the building itself was gorgeous. The kids loved it because there was so much to look at! But more on that later.
Burgermeister: I kid you not, this was the probably the best hamburger I’ve ever had. This is a tiny burger stand in what used to be a public toilets facility, so you order at the window and can either eat standing up at one of the few tables around it or you can do what we did, was cross the street and eat in the tiny pocket park.
Seriously, go here.
Updated: On our second trip, we also really enjoyed a Vietnamese restaurant called Otito and the Lowenbrau restaurant as well. If you are going, I’d also suggest trying to eat at a breakfast joint called Benedict that everyone and their brother recommends, which tragically we weren’t able to visit because of time. Again, read more about that in this post.
Day 1: Berlin with kids
We started our day by moving from our late-night airport hotel to the Marriott, which we took an Uber for. Why is this significant? Because of this amazing thing that all Berlin cabs apparently have: BUILT-IN BOOSTER SEATS. I mean, we actually did have our car seats with us because we needed them in Edinburgh anyway. But not having to install them for a quick cab ride? Amazing. We pretty much knew immediately we were going to enjoy Berlin.
Anyway, off to the real stuff. After we checked in, we headed out the door for the Brandenburg Gate for a view of iconic Berlin. The Bradenburg Gate was built in the late 1700s on the orders of Prussian king Frederick William II, marking the successful restoration of order after the Batavian Revolution. It is Berlin’s only remaining historical gate, and today is considered to be a symbol of the unified Berlin.
So, after the approximately 2 and a half minutes spent looking at that, it was time to get down to the serious stuff: beer and playgrounds. To the Tiergarten we went!
Our interest in stopping at the Tiergarten was inspired in large part by Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, a fantastic nonfiction account of the experiences of the American diplomat to Berlin in the build up to World War II. The book’s title is an English translation of the word Tiergarten. At 570 acres, the Tiergarten is one of Germany’s largest urban parks, and its most popular. We happened to visit on the day of a big race, so there was a fair bit of security to get through, but also lots of food stands set up to grab lunch.
Unfortunately, this also meant we accidentally had to walk about an extra million miles (according to the kids) because we had the bright idea to pop into this Soviet Union memorial along the way, only to learn that we couldn’t get back out the way we came. We were not amused. Russians, man.
Our goal in the Tiergarten (other than procuring some beers!) was to find a playground for the kids, and that we did. It included a zip line that Owen described as “the most fun I’ve ever had in my entire life, more fun than BEING BORN.” Pretty decent endorsement, I’d say.
From here, it was back to our hotel for a quick nap. We’ve honestly mostly given up on napping on vacation any more since they rarely do at home now, but since they’d been up late and spent about 2 hours running around the park like a pair of border collies, we figured it needed to happen. Besides, we needed to rest up for the thing Chris and I were most excited about …
Stone Brewery!
I know, our regular readers will be just so shocked to find a brewery on our agenda. But suspend your disbelief, folks. It was awesome. (We didn’t even do a tour, which they do offer!)
Honestly, even if someone doesn’t drink beer, this place is still absolutely worth a visit. For one, the menu is awesome (see above for information about our obsessing over it for legit DAYS). For another, the building itself is just really interesting. The kids loved it.
We sat inside, but the beer garden also looked gorgeous.
Getting to Stone required a subway ride, followed by a roughly 20-minute walk, but the walk was very pleasant. I’d highly recommend it to anyone going to Berlin! Even if you are doing to Berlin with kids in tow. What’s our theme again? It’s our vacation too!
Day Two: Berlin with kids
We started our day with a visit to the East Side Gallery, which is known as the largest open-air art gallery in the world. It is a series of murals painted on a remnant of the Berlin Wall, and it is fascinating.
Even better, when you are done with the East Side Gallery I’d suggest crossing the River Spree to go to BURGERMEISTER. I said it before, but it bears repeating: THEY ARE MAGICAL.
Plus the kids got a kick out of the burger place being in a former public restroom.
After a brief food coma at the hotel, we woke up and did the obvious thing: decided to eat some more. We took our second-ever Bitemojo food tour, and had a much better experience this time around. I’m going to go into this more in another post, but the basic idea is that rather than taking a guided food tour with a group, you can download this app and pay for a self-guided food tour that you do at your own pace. You follow the directions and it directs you to various restaurants, where you show your BiteMojo app and they present you with a “substantial bite.” While we had mixed feelings about it in Rome, we had an excellent experience in Berlin and got to experience some tasty dishes in an area of the city we probably wouldn’t have ventured out to.
DAY 3: Berlin with kids
On our last real day in Berlin, it was back to the Tiergarten (the opposite side). We spent the morning at the Berlin Zoo and the Berlin Aquarium, which are both inside the Tiergarten and fantastic. It was a pretty expensive zoo to visit, but we felt that it was cool enough to justify the cost (unlike a certain other places we visited on our trip, coughcough Scottish SeaLife Rescue coughcough).
Plus, it was just beautiful! And really shady, which helped since we managed to bring hoooooot weather with us to Berlin. It was in the mid-80s during our visit.
We saw a lot of our favorite animals, including a pair of monkeys that we all related to SO HARD. It was a baby sitting in its mama’s lap, vainly trying to get away to go play with a friend but being held firmly by the tail by his mother. Different members of our group identified with different monkeys, as you can imagine.
Kids: Why doesn’t she let him go play?
Us: Uh, so he doesn’t PLUMMET TO HIS DOOM?
The aquarium is within the zoo (but you need to buy separate tickets) and it was nice, though less wow than the zoo itself. Unless you ask my kids, who were so impressed that they got to harass pet koi swimming around in an open tank repeatedly that it was probably their favorite part.
Unsurprisingly, however, their very favorite thing was pretty much the playground at the zoo, where we stopped for a break after lunch. (Side note: the lunch at the zoo was actually pretty decent).
After the zoo, it was official Mommy and Daddy time. We walked to a beer garden within the Tiergarten for some drinks and dessert at a lovely spot overlooking a pond. The kids had fun taunting pigeons, while we shared a few steins.
Overall, we couldn’t have enjoyed Berlin more. Lucky for us, there are still a lot of things we want to see. We didn’t make it to the Reichstag, for instance, and we’d definitely like to take the kids to Legoland. There’s also apparently an EPIC water park built inside an old aircraft hangar not too far from Berlin (Tropical Islands) that certainly sounds like it would be worth a visit. Though I have to ask, what is with Germans and doing weird things with old airports?
